I am a film maker, of course!” she responds enthusiastically. “But when I was a teenager, I went up to a group of film makers and said: ‘You guys are pretty hard to come by.’ They were shocked! They were like: ‘Have you gone to film school?’ They said: ‘Oh no. We never really got into film school.’ And I was like: ‘So what?’ And they said: ‘Well, we would love to hear what you do,’ and I was like: ‘No, I don’t really know all I want to do!’
“And they said: ‘Well, let’s get together and I’ll try and teach you’. And I went up to them and said: ‘What do you want me to do?’ And they said: ‘Well, we’d like you to do a documentary’. And I went up to them and said: ‘What documentary?’ And they said: ‘Well, you know, all people have a story to tell that they need to tell.’ And I go: ‘No, but that can’t be what I want to do.’ And they said: ‘No, it can!’ And then they talked about the problems that people had. I was like: ‘It doesn’t do anything. People are not going to want to watch it. It will just be like nothing, and that’s not where I’m going to be, and neither is my film.’
“And they were like: ‘You don’t understand. If you just do a documentary, people will just watch it and say: “Oh, why don’t you just do one of those? There’s documentaries out there that are more interesting than your film!” So you’re not going to find any success here.’ And I went back to them. And I said: “Do you know who I am?” And they said yes. And I was like: ‘I am a filmmaker.’ And they said: ‘Oh, that’s great. We’re really interested in hearing what you do.’ And they said in a very very convincing way: “Yes, we did a documentary on a man who had lost his arm and had two prosthetic limbs.” So I went up to them and I said: ‘So you want me to make a documentary about a man who had lost his arms?’ and they said ‘Oh yes.'”
The way that the film got made – and the way it was produced – would have been unthinkable even two years ago. While the filmmaker
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